Determination of the alignment of the transferred angular momentum in deeply inelastic collisions

An expression is obtained for the angular correlation between one outgoing nucleus and the secondary decay products in deeply inelastic collisions. The expression applies to all kinds of secondary decay products studied so far, fission fragments, light particles and γ-rays. The starting point is a general density operator for the states of the nuclei after the collision. By applying the expression to correlation data, the alignment of the angular momentum along the direction perpendicular to the reaction plane can be determined for those nuclei which emit the secondary decay product observed. To illustrate the formalism, alignments are obtained from published fission data and the error limits on the determined alignments are discussed. (orig.)